Terry's Astronomy Thread.

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Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
March 26, 2014

What's in the sky tonight?
March 26, 2014

-As dawn brightens on Thursday morning the 27th, you'll find Venus near the thin waning crescent Moon, as shown here.

-The waning Moon pairs with Venus on Thursday morning the 27th in the longitudes of the Americas. European observers: move each Moon symbol a quarter of the way toward the one for the previous date. In the Far East, move it halfway. The Moon here is drawn three times actual size.

-A CME hit Earth's magnetic field on March 25th at approximately 19:45 UT. The glancing blow was relatively weak, but auroras appeared anyway. Hours after the impact, green lights dueled with the blue glow of dawn over Sørkjosen, Norway." The sky was really bright at 3am, but I could still see the auroras," says photographer Tommy Richardsen. "Times around equinoxes really are special. You can see auroras even when you should not be able to."

He's right. For reasons researchers do not fully understand, equinoxes favour auroras. As northern spring unfolds, even relatively small gusts of solar wind and weak CME impacts can spark a good display. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of geomagnetic storms on March 26th as Earth passes through the wake of the CME.

News Posted Today:
March 25, 2014
Have We Spotted Dark Matter in the Milky Way?


Astro Picture of the Day:
March 26, 2014

Source:
An eerie blue glow and ominous columns of dark dust highlight M78 and other bright reflection nebula in the constellation of Orion. The dark filamentary dust not only absorbs light, but also reflects the light of several bright blue stars that formed recently in the nebula. Of the two reflection nebulas pictured above, the more famous nebula is M78, in the image center, while NGC 2071 can be seen to its lower left. The same type of scattering that colors the daytime sky further enhances the blue color. M78 is about five light-years across and visible through a small telescope. M78 appears above only as it was 1600 years ago, however, because that is how long it takes light to go from there to here. M78 belongs to the larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that contains the Great Nebula in Orion and the Horsehead Nebula.